Who Do You Hate
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But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
I remember the first time that I ever changed the oil on my truck.
I had often shadowed my dad while he did it, but I had never done it on my own.
Until one day he told me I was going to do the work and he was going to shadow me.
So I got out the ramps that we had used 100 times before and I carefully drove my truck up on to them. Once I had succeeded with that task it was time to get under the truck and do what I had witnessed Dad do so many times.
Do I have the right socket, is the oil pan placed in the right spot, can I use my hand for the oil filter or do I need the filter tool? Once I was sure that I had everything in place, I removed the oil plug, let it drain, removed the filter, replaced the oil plug, put the new oil in, sealed the oil filter gasket with oil, put it on and removed the truck off the ramps all under an hour.
I felt like a boss. I felt like I could do anything in that moment.
I was given a specific task by my father, that I wasn’t sure I could do, and once I did, the result was a great sense of accomplishment.
TRANSITION
But the opposite is true of Jonah.
The book of Jonah has one of the greatest and most unexpected final chapters in the entire Bible.
In Chapter three, we see that he finally answers the call of God, goes and preaches a five word sermon, and the response is overwhelming.
The Ninevites believe and repent. Their animals believe and repent.
But Jonah is exceedingly angry.
He was given a specific task by his father, that he wasn’t sure he could do. He did it, causing an entire evil city and their animals to repent, but the result is not a sense of accomplishment. It’s anger.
Why would Jonah melt down in anger when his work was an overwhelming success?
Maybe something else is going on beneath the surface.
TRANSITION
Throughout this book, Jonah has been idolizing his nationality and his comfort, so God keeps testing them both, by calling Jonah into something that has caused those idols to be exposed.
Jonah has been elevating himself and putting others down. Revealing his sinful and self righteous heart; which is making him feel attacked, and unseen, and as a result, making him feel hatred.
Which begs us to ask ourselves the question today, Who do you hate?
Who is the person or the people group that makes your skin crawl.
And then ask yourself why?
What am I attempting to elevate in myself, that’s causing me to put them down?
And maybe they really are terrible. Maybe you have every right to hate them for what they’ve done or who they are.
Or maybe it’s something petty like it was in my life.
Either way, take a moment and consider,
Who do you hate?
Because God loves them.
He has compassion for the most vile human being.
Because all of us, even the ones of us that appear to be really good, fall short of His glory.
But he proves his love for all of us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. All we must do is believe that and receive that, turning away from our sin and turning toward him, and we will be saved.
Because he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
But he will in no means let the guilty go unpunished.
He says this exact thing to Moses in the book of Exodus.
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
He will by no means clear the guilty. This is something that Jonah seems to have forgotten.
In
And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
Jonah is quoting Exodus. But he is not quoting Exodus accurately.
This is why it is important for those of us who believe Scripture, to not just pick and choose verses out of the Bible to make our point or satisfy our agenda.
Because without even realizing it we can twist God’s word to make it say what we want it to say, instead of what he actually intended it to say.
That is what Jonah is doing here. Twisting Scripture for it to make sense to him.
In doing so, He leaves off the part that says God will punish the guilty.
He uses Scripture to justify his anger, and bitterness.
This is a great danger for all religious people. It is possible to use the Bible to selectively justify ourselves. This is dangerous.
In Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
The word of God is alive and active, and sharper than any two edged sword. A two edged sword is always dangerous if misused.
In fact, the one other example we have of anyone twisting the Bible to resist God, as Jonah does, is Satan. He twists God’s word in Genesis and when he speaks to Jesus.
Whenever we read the Bible in order to say, “I’m right! I’m justified, I knew it!”
Whenever we read it to feel righteous and wise in our own eyes, we can be certain we are misusing the Bible.
Because we are missing its central message.
We are reading the Bible rightly only when it humbles us, critiques us, and encourages us with God’s love and grace despite our flaws.
TRANSITION
Jonah experienced God’s grace in the belly of the fish. He saw God’s chesed or grace, and cried out “Salvation comes from the Lord!” But in Jonah 2:8 he also said that those who cling to idols forfeit God’s chesed, his grace.
Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of steadfast love.
He was unable to see this flaw in himself, because he was elevating the flaws of others.
He thought the nonbelievers around him had idols, but he did not think that he did. In other words, he saw the splinter in his neighbor’s eye, but missed the log in his own.
This is the very reason he could experience a spiritual crash after God showed Nineveh mercy.
Because Jonah still feels that mercy must be deserved, and these nonbelievers didn’t deserve it.
He is already forgetting that salvation comes from the Lord.
TRANSITION
But he had just experienced the grace of God! How could he still be struggling with sin, and identity issues?
Because grace is not a one and done thing. We need it every hour of every day.
I remember when I first gave my life to Christ, being disappointed that I wasn’t fixed immediately. All my problems remained.
I had this thought that my Christian walk should be smooth sailing.
But being changed by God’s grace is a long journey. It is not a quick fix for your problems.
Grace happens to us over and over throughout our entire life.
In Ephesians 4:22-24 Paul says
to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Paul is speaking against the lie that our Christian walk will be smooth sailing, and instead he describes it as a continual battle between the old self, and the new self.
Jonah shows us this too, that even after we experience grace, we continue to be sinners. We need a long view of ourselves. We need a long view of our neighbor. This is not to justify our bad behavior or their’s, but to understand that sanctification is a long and hard process. But his grace is sufficient to see us through that process.
And as we keep going back to Jesus for it, we will soon understand that it never runs out.
TRANSITION
Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.
When Jonah sees God have mercy on these sinners, he is offended and enraged.
He leaves the city throwing a fit, staying close enough to see if maybe God would unleash his wrath on them.
While there, God caused a plant to grow up over him, to save him from his discomfort.
Remember that he has been idolizing comfort and nationality, the two things God keeps testing. So the Lord gave Jonah a plant that made him exceedingly glad.
He went from pouty baby to happy baby in moments.
Jonah was feeling sorry for himself and the shade plant was something that allowed him to say,
“FINALLY… something is going my way.” Which makes the next thing that God does shocking to Jonah.
But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”
God who showed mercy to the Ninevites in chapter 3, has also continually been showing Jonah mercy as he walks him through his rebellion. God called Jonah, and Jonah ran away from that call. So God appointed a storm. God appointed a fish. God appointed a plant. And God appointed a worm to eat that plant, all to remind Jonah that he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. But the guilty will by no means go unpunished. Something God has been attempting to remind Jonah throughout this journey.
And when God appoints the worm, Jonah becomes angry enough to die all over again, and this brings us to God’s final speech.
And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
In verses 10 and 11 God uses the Hebrew phrase hos which means to look upon with compassion, and to weep over.
In the ESV it is translated as the word pity.
God says, “you look upon this withering plant with compassion, weeping over it, yet you had no hand in making it, and it was gone as quick as it came. I look upon these many people who are fearfully and wonderfully made, and intricately woven together, yet are spiritually blind, and I weep over them, with a much greater compassion than you could ever have for this plant.”
Simply, “Jonah you weep over plants and material comforts, But I, Yahweh, the God of all creation, weep over people.”
Tim Keller says that “This is the language of attachment.”
In Genesis 6:6
And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
when God sees that man continually does evil, the Bible said, “He was grieved to His heart.”
Now all other religions view the earth and man being created out of some cosmic battle.
But Christianity says that God the Father created the earth and man as good things out of an overflow of perfect love.
He was in a true love relationship from eternity past with God the Spirit and God the Son.
And we saw a few weeks ago that a true love relationship is always sacrificial.
It is never ultimately aimed at self satisfaction, but always aimed at honoring the other. That is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are always honoring one another through their existence. Through their relationship.
So when God created the earth and mankind, he didn’t do it because he was lonely. He did it out of an overflow of perfect love.
No other religion makes such a claim.
So, God does not attach himself to us because he needs us.
Most of our attachments as humans are involuntary. Meaning, we need many things, and we get emotionally attached to things that meet those needs. Jonah did not look at the plant and say I’m going to attach my heart to you in affection, no it met a need that he had, and he loved it because it met that need.
But God needs nothing. He is perfectly happy in himself. He is perfect love in himself. Father, Son and Spirit. He did not create the world out of loneliness. He doesn’t need us.
And He speaks of these violent pagans, these evil nonbelievers as people who do not know their right hand from their left.
They are spiritually blind, and they don’t have the first clue as to the source of their problems or what to do about them.
There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, and they don’t have any guide to tell them right from wrong. God looks down at these people who are in this spiritual fog, and we know He doesn’t say, “You idiots.”
When we on the other hand, look at people who have brought trouble into their lives by their own foolishness, we say things like, “Serves them right.” We can even gloat at those who are living wrong and paying for it. But brothers and sisters, this is simply our way of detaching ourselves from their unhappiness.
We distance ourselves from them partly because of pride, and partly because we don’t want their unhappiness to rub off on us.
God doesn’t do that.
Keller again says, “Real compassion, the voluntary attachment of our heart to others, means the sadness of their condition makes us sad. It is uncomfortable, but it is the character of compassion.”
TRANSITION
Jonah might have been God’s prophet, but he did not share God’s compassion. Jonah did not weep for this city, but Jesus, the true prophet, did. When Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on the last week of His life he knew He was going to suffer a violent death by the hands of the leaders of the city, but instead of being full of wrath or self pity, like Jonah,
Jesus says in Luke 19: “If you had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes…because you did not recognize God’s coming to you.” And “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
On the cross Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He is literally saying, “Father, they are torturing and killing me. They are denying and betraying me. But none of them, not even the Pharisees, really, completely understands what they are doing.”
We can only look at such a heart in awe and wonder. He does not say they are guilty, though they are, for that is why He came speaking forgiveness.
But Jesus in this moment is remembering that they are confused, and somewhat clueless, not really able to recognize the horror of what they are doing. This is God’s perfect heart. He voluntarily attached himself to us. He did not harshly condemn. But had compassion on those who did not know their right hand from their left.
This is the God found throughout Jonah in human form.
Theologian BB Warfield did a study on the emotions displayed by Christ. He concluded that by far the most typical statement of Jesus’ emotional life was the phrase, “he was moved with compassion.” A Greek phrase that literally means, he was moved from the depths of His being. One commentary said that The Bible records Jesus Christ weeping twenty times for every one time it notes that He laughs.
He was a man of sorrows, and not because He was depressed. He had enormous joy in the Holy Spirit (Luke 10:21), and yet He grieved far more than He laughed because His compassion connected Him with us. Our sadness makes Him sad. Our pain brings Him pain.
Jesus is the prophet Jonah should have been.
TRANSITION
So, going back to this idea that Jonah struggled with, and that we struggle with today.
How can God be both merciful, and judge?
How can He demonstrate compassion and punish the guilty?
How does His holiness and His love fit together?
The answer is, as it always is... Jesus.
God can mourn those far from Him, while providing them safe passage back to Him through the atoning death of Jesus. In Exodus God gave detailed directions to Moses on how to build a tabernacle, the place where people could come close to the presence of God. In John 1, John had the audacity to write that Jesus Christ became flesh, and (literally) tabernacled among us. God’s glory filled the tabernacle, as God’s glory filled Christ.
God is perfect love and God is perfect justice, and that is settled forever in Jesus Christ.
So Jonah, just like all of us, fell short of the glory of God.
We can argue with Him as Jonah did. We can be angry at Him, as Jonah was. But we cannot stay there. And that is where the book ends.
Many commentators have suggested that the book of Jonah ends in the way that it does, that it might force us to contemplate our own destiny. It remains unfinished that we might draw our own conclusion, which works well with the overarching idea that this book is intended to be a mirror for us to see ourselves.
If we are to apply this text to our own time and place as believers of the gospel and followers of Jesus Christ, who just planted a new church, we must go back to the beginning of this book and consider the call of God.
We are to be fruitful and multiply image bearers, or disciples who walk and work the land, teaching them all that Jesus has commanded us. This is our call. As individuals and as The Garden Church.
And we are to take it into our hearts, households, workplaces, neighborhoods, grocery stores, etc.
We have been called to make disciples and model the gospel.
Will we answer the call or will we turn away?
LET’S PRAY
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